Vampire Sire

by J. R. Rain

  Sorry.

  Why are you apologizing? You know he died before I, umm… met you.

  Kyle’s girlfriend takes the giant fork from him and pokes the turkey dogs. Bleh! Those things don’t even smell like real meat. I’m going to need a fresh octopus to purge the disgust out of my senses. Maybe a squid, instead; octopi are a bit slimy.

  I’m confident these kids are a bunch of harmless slackers. Kyle’s nineteen. If he wants to waste his time out here in the woods, it’s his time to waste. I back away from the campground until enough trees block me from sight. None of them notice me. Not that it would make a difference if I’m seen, but old habits die hard, and I’d prefer to remain anonymous. If Kyle’s father wants to tell him he hired a private investigator to find him, that’s his business. Leave me out of it. I figure in a couple weeks, Kyle will be as poor as Job’s turkey and go home. Or maybe he’ll venture out of the campsite and look for gainful employment.

  They might take up farming.

  I laugh aloud, startling a squirrel so bad, the poor thing runs headfirst into a tree and knocks itself senseless. Fortunately, I’d parked my Jeep Rubicon far enough from the campsite that I don’t think any of the kids heard me. Then again, I could pass for one of their group. I’ve been twenty-five for over a century, and people tell me I look more like twenty.

  With that thought stuck in my head, I hop in my Rubi and start the drive home, grinning at my nickname for the Jeep. It’s a lustrous dark red, which makes the name a pun, too.

  ***

  I’ve got a nice place in Medina right on the water.

  I suppose most people would consider the property expensive, but after so many years, I’ve gathered a comfortable nest egg. I wasn’t born into wealth―far from it. I grew up poor to the point of not having shoes until around the time I hit fourteen. As a small girl, most of my dresses had been flour sacks in a former life. Fortunately, I’d been an only child, so my mother didn’t need to break her back too much to support us. I never knew my father. Mom never talked about him much, though around my mid-teens, she admitted he’d left as soon as she’d told him I was on the way. She’d been afraid I’d internalize it as a child and think something had been wrong with me, but I didn’t take it personally. He couldn’t have abandoned me because he had no idea who I was, merely ‘a baby coming.’

  Anyway, if a person sticks around long enough, eventually money finds them. I had a knack for marrying up, though only my first husband had been a marriage in any legal sense, and my only one while still a mortal. The last two had both deemed it fair to set me up for ‘life’ when we parted ways. Immortal businessmen have more money than God, and both had been surprisingly happy to give me a nice chunk of it. Patrick Foster had been my first supernatural husband, a werewolf. I think he loved me at one point, but whether due to his canine nature or something more human, he couldn’t keep it in his pants.

  For most of the 80s, I considered myself ‘married’ to a vampire by the name of Manfred Worley. I’d met him in London in 1930 or so, but I didn’t know it at the time. He remembered me when we bumped into each other in Southern California when I’d been living in San Diego. I think he’s still there. Unlike Patrick, Manfred turned out to view me as a curiosity, no actual love involved―but the sex wasn’t bad. After the magic ran out of our relationship, he remained friendly, and added to my fortune when we decided to part ways.

  I have dozens of bank accounts around the world, enough that my money makes money. I don’t have to work, but I enjoy it. Sitting around all day staring at paintings would drive me insane, so the private investigator thing keeps me from winding up in a padded fish tank.

  My house is still somewhat modest for the area. Even in this part of the city, I could’ve afforded more, but I only need so much room, being alone. I like nice things, specifically art. Much of my wall space goes toward displaying a veritable showcase of modern, postmodern, and classic paintings―heavy on the avant garde. Some of them are pretty weird and dark, and many bloody. That’s got to be Licinia’s influence. I’d always been on the squeamish side. As a child, I’d been the first girl standing on a chair to get away from the giant bug, and I think I did faint once at the sight of blood when I’d been around nine. Mom had nicked herself with a kitchen knife.

  With a beautiful home, a beautiful view, a collection of beautiful art that would rival any museum ―art that I most certainly didn’t donate to the local thrift shops―one might think I would be content. But isn’t that the thing about life? Who is ever content? I’ll tell you who, people who are six feet under. Contentment equals death, of that I have no doubt. Want a long and rewarding life? Never let the life force stop flowing, never stop creating, never stop giving back, never stop living.

  Unless, of course, a person happens to be immortal.

  Then it doesn’t matter what the hell one does. Except, even in my immortality, I have things I need to do. For instance, I can’t stray far from salt water. Yes, the ocean. Why, I don’t know, but Licinia’s nature demands it. That, as well as darker, bloodier requirements. Fresh meat, preferably of the male type. Though, I am fortunate in that my Dark Mistress is able to set the craving for human flesh aside. Fish, sea life, and sometimes beef scratch that itch. My human side never accepted the idea of eating people, so I’m grateful she lets me slide there. That, and tearing a guy open to eat his heart and internal organs tends to get on the nerves of the local cops.

  Anyway, I decided to buy this house even though it was on the low end of my budget. Mind you, they don’t build ‘basic’ homes with an oceanfront location around here, so I settled on something the locals call ‘midrange.’

  One good thing about the property is thick trees on both sides. My neighbors can’t see much, which suits me fine. Since I’ve spent all day in the damn woods, that inner part of me craves the ocean.

  After leaving my clothes on the back steps, I run faster than I have in quite a while for the shore. Fast enough that my hair whips behind me, my boobs bounce, and maybe some other parts as well. Licinia thinks my ass is small, but I guess beauty standards aren’t quite what they were two millennia ago.

  I fly over my lawn and down the small private pier before leaping in a graceful dive. Lake Washington, silver to my eyes, shimmers before me.

  Soon, I’ll feel alive again. I’ll be whole.

  Complete.

  Silver Light

  is available at:

  Amazon Kindle * Amazon UK

  Also available:

  Silent Echo

  A mystery novel

  by J.R. Rain

  (read on for a sample)

  Chapter One

  I am sitting with a friend at a coffee shop. We do this every afternoon and I enjoy the routine. In general, we don’t say much, and I enjoy that, too.

  Today is no different. We are sitting together under a wide umbrella near the Beverly Center in Beverly Hills at my favorite outdoor cafe, The Coffee Bean. I like the Bean. Here, they use vanilla powder instead of syrup; the powder adds just enough texture to the drink to give it some added density and grit. I like that.

  The day is hot and the sun has found a small patch of my exposed arm. My skin is burning in the direct glare, but I do not move my arm. I let my flesh burn slowly because I do not care about such things anymore. It’s just a sunburned arm, after all. I have bigger fish to fry, so to speak.

  My friend, Numilekunoluwa, or Numi, looks up from the journal he’s writing in, one where he jots down random thoughts, impressions, and observations. Th is journal is his life and he goes through many such booklets each year. Such constant writing looks like a lot of work to me. I don’t have the strength for such work. I barely have the strength to sit here in my chair without toppling over.

  “Eddie wants to see you,” says Numi in his strong Nigerian accent. “He says he wants to talk to you about something important.”

  I nod and turn back to my arm, where I can see my skin now noticeably reddening. I open and flex my
hand, spreading my fingers wide. My hand appears incandescent in the splash of sunlight. Bluish veins glow like neon tubes just beneath the surface of my skin. I try to make a fist, but I’m too weak to do even that.

  “Don’t you even want to know why he wants to see you, man?” asks Numi. He sets down his pen, which for him is serious business. It means his journal will wait.

  “To say good-bye, I assume,” I say.

  “You assume incorrectly, cowboy. He wants to hire you.”

  “Hire me?”

  “Yes.”

  “For what?”

  “He has a job for you, boss.”

  “You’re joking.”

  He laces his fingers over his notepad and levels his considerable stare at me. His eyes are piercingly white against his rich black skin. “Do I look like I’m joking, kemosabe?”

  “If by joking you mean looking scary as hell, then yes.”

  “Is that another reference to my beautiful black skin?”

  “You mean your terrifyingly black skin.”

  Numi shakes his head and grins. “Do you want to hear about the job or not?”

  A hot wind ruffles the canvas umbrella above us, rocking the metal pipe in the center hole of the glass table. Someone had shoved a piece of paper between the pipe and the table, perhaps to keep it from clanging. I reach over and remove the piece of paper. My detective’s curiosity still alive, I begin unfolding it. There is nothing written on it.

  “Eddie knows I’m sick,” I say. The fact that Eddie hasn’t bothered to see me in two years is a source of some hurt for me.

  Numi unlaces his fingers and eases back in his chair. His iced coffee sits in front of him, forgotten and pooling condensation. Numi looks away when he says, “I told him he should speak with you anyway, cowboy.”

  I am about to sit forward until I realize that sitting forward takes more effort than I’m willing to give. So, I stay back in my bamboo chair and say, “Why would you tell him that?”

  Numi continues not looking at me. He has taken my illness hardest of all. No surprise there. “Because you’re the only one who can help him, man, and you ain’t dead yet.”

  It’s not that Numi forgets I’m sick. It’s not that he forgets that I’ve been diagnosed with an incurable AIDS-related cancer that has spread to my lungs. It’s not that eight months ago, I was given six months to live and that I’m now living on borrowed time. It’s that my old friend is in some serious denial, and he only wishes it was a damn river in Egypt.

  “True,” I say. “I’m not dead yet.”

  I look at my coffee in front of me and I want to reach for it, but my shoulder hurts so much that I don’t want to move. All I want to do is sit there and close my eyes and feel the hot sun on my arm. I have no business being up and about. The doc had insisted I stay in bed. But I figure if I’m gonna die, I might as well do it with a latte in my hand.

  “Just talk to him, cowboy.”

  I look at Numi and he suddenly grins broadly, showing a blindingly white row of tiny bottom teeth. I know this smile. It is a new smile meant for me, created for me. It’s a little too big, too unnatural, too patronizing, too euphoric. It is a smile that Numi gives only me when he’s willing my world to be safe. As if my African friend can will away my sickness with his bright smile. I wish he could. He has given it his best shot.

  I take in some air, which rattles around in my chest. “Help him, how?”

  Numi thinks it’s his smile that has willed me forward, and so he flashes it again, and this time, reaches out and takes my hand. Numi is gay, and I am not. Lately, he has taken my hand a lot and I have let him. Mostly, I do not have the strength to pull it away. And truth be known, I appreciate his comforting touch. He is the only one who touches me, outside of the prodding and poking of doctors. Instinctively, I want to pull away, but I don’t. He squeezes my hand and his touch alone, his very strong touch, gives me a jolt of strength.

  Numi says, “Someone close to him is missing.”

  Now, I do pull my hand away and sit up. The effort alone causes a wave of dizziness that nearly overwhelms me. I feel myself swaying in my chair and I nearly vomit, but I fight through it. After all, this is what I did years ago, before the sickness. Before I was diagnosed with AIDS. Before the cancer. Before all of that, I found those who were missing. I found them, one way or another. Dead or alive.

  “Who’s missing?” I ask.

  Numi shakes his head and then flicks his eyes over my shoulder. “I don’t know, man, but he’s coming now. He can tell you.”

  Silent Echo

  is available at:

  Amazon Kindle * Amazon UK * Paperback * Audio

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  About the Author:

  J.R. Rain is the international bestselling author of over seventy novels, including his popular Samantha Moon and Jim Knighthorse series. His books are published in five languages in twelve countries, and he has sold more than 3 million copies worldwide.

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